come home
by KaseyAnn
Summary: "His head hurt, his body hurt, his heart hurt everything hurt hurt hurt so much those first few days." Post-Mockingjay.


come home

* * *

_your whereabouts unknown, please know you can come home_

_it's alright_

_i long for the moment our silence is broken_

_it's alright, it's alright, it's alright_

_/_

_it's alright now_

_all is forgiven, if you could just listen _

* * *

"Shoot straight, okay?"

And in that moment, what hurts the most is how some sort of force keeps them from looking each other in the eye, gray avoiding gray.

_Like a magnets, _Gale thinks, and his lips twitch as he holds in a burst of hysterical laughter. _We're too alike, aren't we? So we've_ _repelled. _

x

Contrary to what he thought at the time, this isn't the last time that they meet.

* * *

"Gale, please, come back with us."

Posy hugs Gale around his knees, looking up at him with wide, gray eyes. Gale tries to keep his hand from trembling as he smooths down a curly black lock of hers. He hopes him leaving doesn't ruin Posy. He knows that it'll be like losing a father for her, but he can't stay in 12, and he can't drag his whole family with him to 2, and he can't just take Posy, so the only thing he can do is leave alone. A fresh start.

"I can't, Pose, you know that," he says softly, kissing her forehead.

_It's not fair, _he thinks, _that my sister is alive when I killed hers. _

Horrible, horrible thoughts.

He only takes the clothes on his back and too many memories with him to District 2.

* * *

If only he had designed the bombs to explode once. Wasn't one time enough?

* * *

Once upon a time, Gale thought that he was too good to drown anything he couldn't face with alcohol.

Now, he wreaks havoc on his kidneys, and when he flails and tries to surface from his little ocean of drinking, it results in days of him locking himself in his room and staring at corners or destroying.

Usually, President Paylor herself sends someone to bust open his door and/or window to get him out.

* * *

Gale is living off of pay for doing nothing. That would bother the Gale Hawthorne who designed weapons through the night in 13 and the Gale Hawthorne who hunted and took care of his family in District 12.

The Gale Hawthorne who lives in District 2's only sentiment towards that is that _well, just more money to waste at the bar. _

Apparently, Gale qualifies for a pension-type program set up by President Paylor for anyone who isn't able to support themselves after the war. They are given a set amount each month by the government until they're self-supporting, but for Gale, it's been two years, and he's still depending on the same program.

x

On this certain day, however, Paylor decides it's been enough and takes him off the program. Surprisingly, she also offers him a government job.

"I'm not designing anything," Gale slurs over the phone.

"All you have to do is show up sober enough to sort some papers," Paylor says in that clipped way of hers, exuding authority.

x

The simplest of tasks, but Gale thinks sorting papers is a good start.

A paper in the wrong pile won't kill anyone. Him moving a bit too slow won't kill anyone. A slight disfigured paper won't kill anyone.

* * *

"What are you doing right now?"

Gale closes his eyes and leans his head against the wall.

"Nothing really, Rory. How's school?"

Small, small, tentative steps. Katniss was not the only one who loved Prim.

"School's okay."

A pause, and then suddenly Rory bursts out, "I don't blame you Gale. I never blamed you, I was just confused and angry." He sounds close to tears. "It wasn't your fault, okay? Just come back Gale. Come home."

"I can't," Gale replies hoarsely. "Please, just drop it, okay?"

* * *

He never expected forgiveness from her.

Katniss Everdeen did not love easily, but when she did love, she loved with all she had in her.

(It was all on the shoulders of the girl whose hair shone like sunshine and whose laugh was made of it.)

Gale sometimes wonders, deep into his drunken stupors, if he somehow destroyed Katniss's capability to love.

x

Because Katniss has almost destroyed his.

* * *

He remembers when he was young and his father told him that it's incredibly hard to build up trust and oh so simple to destroy it.

* * *

Paylor is a smart, smart woman.

One day he went to her office, insisting that his pay was not enough for anyone like him to live in such an expensive area like District 2. Paylor, in response, pulled out a few sheets of paper, and handed them to him silently.

A budget plan.

Her budget plan worked wonderfully; hell, she had calculated it to a T, and it used up every last cent of his pay while still covering all of the necessities (rent and food, for the most part, Paylor said any medical bills or accident costs would be covered by her personally) but one.

There was no room in there for alcohol.

Which wasn't a problem, of course, because this wouldn't be the first time Gale would have to use his looks to his advantage.

Paylor could apparently see the gears turning in his head, because she added then, "There's a strict order for every bar and pub not to serve you any alcoholic drinks, with a weekly cash reward if they follow orders." She mentioned nothing about the black market, and her eyes dared him to stoop that low.

And so he would not stoop that low.

"Clever," Gale muttered furiously. "Very clever."

Paylor smiled thinly.

He was glad her next visit to District 2 was not for at least month.

x

His head hurt, his body hurt, his heart hurt everything hurt hurt hurt so much those first few days.

* * *

"I don't see you doing this to anyone else!" he yelled the next time the president came to 2. Everyone came back to keep him up at night and he couldn't _take it. _"You've left everyone else alone, all the victors, all the refugees. Why can't you leave me alone?"

Paylor met his gaze evenly.

"Your mind, Gale Hawthorne, is not one to be wasted."

She looked back down at her paperwork, and the topic was closed.

x

Why couldn't she see that his mind was already consuming him?

* * *

"Hi, Gale."

"Hey, Posy." He picks the not-so-little-anymore girl up and spins her around. His mother stands behind Posy, and behind her, stand his brothers.

"Vick, Rory." Gale says, stepping forward to ruffle their hair, even though they are both nearly as tall as him. He hesitates before pulling them in for a hug.

"I missed you guys."

His mother bursts out crying and clings to him, and Posy starts crying, wrapping her arms around his waist, and he feels his own eyes tear up.

x

The apartment was neatened up, suitable enough for a family of five. He made sure there were no visible scratches on the walls, no obvious dents and fractures.

* * *

For one glorious week his family stays with him, and he takes them around District 2, showing them all the parks and restaurants and stores the place has to offer. Other times, they just sit quietly in his living room, huddled together or lounging around in comfortable silence.

It is not normalcy, but he almost likes it.

x

There were fake smiles, so many fake smiles that everyone saw right through, but he managed some real smiles. A start.

* * *

"Come back with us, Gale."

Tears quiver in Posy's eyes, and Vick and Rory look at him solemnly.

Rory gives him a small smile. "Someday?"

"Someday."

* * *

"I think I'm ready to do something more."

* * *

He's assigned to help oversee Panem's security plans.

"That area's unsecured," Gale says, frowning at a point on the map. It's the border between Districts 2 and the territory outside of Panem, where who knows what resides.

"Our focus is on the Capitol right now." His boss, a man with blonde hair who is almost as tall as him, says dismissively.

"But there's no-"

His eyes narrow. _Not used to people talking back, are you? _Gale thinks.

"Who are you to-"

"He's been recruited to the team by Paylor herself. I suggest we listen to him."

Another newcomer, who's probably worked his way up into the security council from the bottom, is the one who finally spoke. Gale faked a smile at him.

"Here's what we should do."

* * *

He's sent to the far side of District 2 along with a team of engineers and constructors to help oversee his own plans.

* * *

The next night, he stares down a bottle of painkillers for hours, before finally blinking back tears and putting them away.

* * *

"I think you should take a trip. A change of scenery."

"I thought you were more creative than the classic therapy techniques."

"Maybe they're classics for a reason."

* * *

And so he goes, on presidential order, to District 4 to stay with Johanna and Annie. To have someone familiar monitor him, he knows, although Paylor insists half-heartedly that it's only because the ocean is just a _must-see _sight, and since Annie is conveniently there, why not?

Johanna opens the door and smiles at him when he arrives. Her hair has grown out into a brown tangle hanging to her shoulders. "Oh look, it's the handsome cousin," she says, bumping his hip with hers as he walks through the doorway. He tries to smile, and Johanna says, her expression becoming a fraction more solemn, "You don't have to pretend here."

A gurgling toddler then waddles over to him, tipping precariously this way and that before finally falling down on his bottom. He laughs, trying to grab at Gale's shoelaces.

Gale's expression softens the tiniest bit. He bends down, about to pick up the little green-eyed baby when Johanna says, "No touching the baby with dirty hands."

* * *

Annie's madness is only a touch better.

Watching her prep for dinner is strange and fascinating, the way she sings and hums to herself, twirling around and sometimes staring so fixedly at a space that he tries to make out what she sees in the air. She lifts Finnick up every now and then when he wanders into the kitchen, putting him on the table, the counter, dusting his nose with flour.

Johanna helps set the table and he jumps up to join her, and the house is quiet save for Annie's tune.

"This is amazing," Gale says, taking a bite of his fish. He rips off little pieces every now and then, checks them for bones and feeds them to Finnick.

"It's a sort of therapy for her," Johanna says. "And it means I don't have to cook."

"What do you do?" Gale says, looking at her.

"I visit the woods. Climb trees. Chop trees. Collect pine needles. Whatever keeps the faces away."

"Why?"

She doesn't have to ask for clarification.

"I have to stick around for the kid."

* * *

Annie goes to bed early, rocking little Finnick in her arms.

Gale sees the way Johanna flinches when she opens the tap to do the dishes, and she gives him the closest thing to a grateful look she can manage (which is really a sort of scowl) when he offers to take over.

* * *

XxX

* * *

_I don't even know what this is, but it's sitting in my Doc Manager for a while. There will be another part. _

_I still have to finish 'And We All Fall Down'. My computer crashed a while back, making me lose all of the third part that I had written, and then when I finally rewrote half, the file was corrupted while saving it for some reason, so I really had absolutely no motivation until now. _

_I've now rewritten half of it, so it'll probably be up in about a week. _

_Thanks to anyone who bothers reading this unedited slop haha :D _


End file.
